Faulty Dealer Oil Change

[Bruce]

Asking for a friend who has a Toyota Prius and has faithfully taken it to the dealership for all the appropriate services.

The Prius is 5 years old with 28,000 miles (still has the drivetrain warranty).

Prior to leaving on a trip, the dealer changed the oil, but forgot to replace the filter o-ring. 30 mile out on the trip, the oil light came on. They took the car to the nearest Toyota dealership to find there was no oil in the engine and a missing o-ring on the filter. The mechanic also showed them little metal flakes in the oil pan as as result of this issue.

The original servicing dealer said to bring the car back and they will replace all the impacted parts of the engine to make them whole.

Is this what my friend should expect? Or is this engine pretty much shot, and they should hold out for a better deal such as full value trade in for a replacement car at cost, a new replacement engine, or such?

Topic

[Richard Kirshy]

The dealership is responsible to repair what ever damage done due to neglect .
Be that, repairing / rebuilding / replacing the engine.
So long as the dealership stands by the repair / rebuild / replacement and it is put in writing.

[Billy]

Unlikely that anything short of a replacement engine will permanently fix this.

[jonathan]

Its the dealer responsibility they were responsible for the service. I would say best bet is to replace the engine. Lots of damage has been done and its not likely better to fix it other than a replacement one

[Dave Tidman]

The only way the dealer can tell that they fixed all the damage would be to completely disassemble the engine (the bores could be heavily damaged).
Either a complete rebuild or replacement is called for (and I would make sure they extend the warranty for some time to cover anything with the replacement/rebuild).

[Billy]

The good news is, one of the things you pay for in a dealership’s high service prices is insurance. They are covered for this sort of thing, so if you’re conscientious with your documentation of the incident and stick to your guns, you can almost certainly get a new engine out of the deal.

[Author]

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